"Are you the guy from 'Bonnie and Clyde'? The one from that famous 'Star Trek' episode?"

No, that's Michael J. Pollard. This is Michael Irvin Pollard, who's in "The Apple," Vern Thiessen's play that opens Friday at New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch. Pollard portrays Andy, a husband who's lost his government job.

Says Pollard over lunch near his Metuchen home, "He's a numbers guy, and the numbers don't add up enough to keep him on the payroll."

Exacerbating the problem is that Andy's wife, Lynn, is doing very well in real estate. She makes him feel unimportant, and he's soon in another woman's arms.

To a degree, Pollard understands Andy's frustration. For years, if he wasn't confused with Michael J. Pollard, he was known as "Wendy Liscow's husband." She was associate artistic director of the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick from 1987-98.

"I admit that when she was set to direct a play, I would plead, 'Is there anything in it for me?,'" he recalls.

Occasionally, there was. Liscow cast him in small parts in "All My Sons" in 1989 and "The Sunshine Boys" in 1997. The problem wasn't so much that Pollard worried that the other actors thought he got the parts by sleeping with the director.

"What was worse was that the cast always bands together and at some point talks about the director," he says. "When it was Wendy, I couldn't be a part of that. I also couldn't rag about the other actors to my wife, either, and some actors would suspect I was doing that.

"I wasn't concerned that people might think she wore the pants in the family. But it's a struggle to maintain your self-esteem as an actor, anyway, so to be marginalized in a professional situation was bothersome."

The sticky situation began to change in 2002, after Pollard went to the New Jersey Theatre Alliance's annual "combined auditions." There, an actor performs a monologue for the state's artistic directors. SuzAnne Barabas of New Jersey Repertory Company was impressed with Pollard and asked him to become a member of her company.

His first role was in the two-member comedy "Big Boys," which was co-produced with Playwrights Theatre in Madison.

"Because of appearing in both towns, more and more people got to see me, and the New Jersey community got to see what I could do on my own. You can say that 'Big Boys' was my big break," Pollard says.

He was calling himself Michael Irvin then. "Just like the Dallas Cowboys' wide receiver," he says. "When he started getting into trouble with sex and drugs, I thought I'd better use my full name."

Since "Big Boys," Pollard has been seen at the Women's Theater Company in Wayne and at the Bickford Theatre in Morris Township -- though he concedes that his two stints with the Bickford have been under Liscow's direction.

"What's really happened is that I've grown into my type," says the bald-headed Pollard, who is 47. "When I was 25, I thought I should get cast in certain roles, and now I see I was too young for them. I'm clearly a middle-aged character actor, and I'm enjoying seeing all these different roles open up to me."